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clung to her for only a moment, then pulled away, turning back toward the house. “Rowdy. I have to go back. Oh, please, he needs help, not me.”
    “Brennan is calling Dr. Firetti,” Kathleen said. “He’ll come as quick as he can. We don’t want to handle the dog and maybe hurt him worse; it’s best the doctor take care of him.”
    Becky fought to free herself. She was shaking, wiping at her tears. “Please, please help Rowdy. Can’t I just be with him?”
    “It’s a crime scene now,” Kathleen said. “We’d rather you stayed out here. If we pick Rowdy up or handle him, we could make his injuries worse. We want to wait for the vet.” But then, watching the younger woman, Kathleen relented. “Come on,” she said, “you can sit with him if you’ll stay in one place. Don’t pick him up, Becky.”
    Becky nodded and they moved inside. Above them, Kit slipped down from the roof into the foliage of a pepper tree and then into the bushes beside the open door. She could see where the glass pane beside the door had been broken out, could see Becky inside kneeling beside the fireplace gently stroking the little terrier. Officer Brennan stood by the far glass wall speaking on his cell phone. He had pulled on cloth booties, as had Kathleen and the chief. Kit didn’t have cloth booties, and as she slipped inside she hoped to hell that, if they used some electronic gadget to see footprints, they’d miss hers. Shards of glass sparkled everywhere across the dark wood floor; she stepped carefully among them, staying in shadow and close to the walls. The little dog continued to scream. She wasn’t sure what she thought she’d see that the sharp-eyed cops would miss. But visual surveillance didn’t matter so much, the detective would be on top of that; it was the scents that Kit was after, the elusive smells that no human could detect.
    Against a far wall, two armchairs had been overturned and an end table broken. One of Becky’s sandals lay beside them. As Kit prowled the room staying out of sight behind the overturned furniture, she could detect no scent but the sharp cinnamon smell of baking that flowed from the kitchen to drown any scent of the invaders. Across the room Brennan was growing nervous, shouting into the phone for Dr. Firetti to hurry.
    John Firetti was Kit’s own doctor, she knew he’d drop everything and come—if he wasn’t in the middle of some other emergency. Beyond the overturned chairs a lamp lay broken, and the phone fallen beside it. By the time Brennan holstered his cell phone and looked up, Kit had abandoned her search and slipped back outside to the porch—that was when she caught another smell, a rank smell, faint but unpleasant. The faint stink of fish so old and ripe it made her pull a face of disgust, flehming and nearly gagging.
    Kit liked her seafood fresh, preferred it the day it was caught. This smell was like the rotting fish Lucinda buried under the rosebushes to keep them blooming with such careless abandon. Had one of the attackers come from a fishing boat? Or perhaps from the wharves along the coast where fish might have been cleaned and the offal left to rot? Or maybe from the little fishing wharf at the edge of the village? Kit took a good whiff, gagged again, and backed away. She kept backing, straight into the bushes, as Captain Harper appeared inside the house, coming out of the kitchen. Harper didn’t need to catch her snooping, he already had too many questions about cats and crime scenes.
    Though the chief had grown used to the three cats wandering in and out of the station, sleeping in an office bookcase or on a desk, enjoying handouts from the dispatcher, being spotted at a crime scene wasn’t so smart, they didn’t need the officers’ puzzled stares. Now, hidden from Harper, Kit stuck her nose out of the bushes and watched as Dr. Firetti pulled up to the drive in his white van.
    Parking, he stepped out, and an office nurse with him. The two hurried into the